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Monday, December 5, 2016

Busted: The Micropower of Prisons in Narco-States

The 2015 prison escape
of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman demonstrated the degree to which Mexican drug
cartels have penetrated a key institution of state control. A mile long tunnel was constructed beneath
Mexico’s maximum-security prison compound; included in the tunnel was a motorcycle
on a rail to hasten El Chapo’s escape.
Prison officials and corrections staff were complicit in his escape;
they ignored the construction noise underneath El Chapo’s cell and refrained
from watching his movements. At the time
of his escape, the prison guards responsible for monitoring El Chapo were
playing computer solitaire while their other computer screens linked to the
closed-circuit cameras were turned off.[1]
In his empty cell, investigators also found a dead sparrow; it was
apparently used to test the air quality of the tunnel before El Chapo descended
through its opening beneath his shower.

In another case from
Mexico, members of Los Zetas drug cartel used Piedras Negras Prison in Coahuila
as an execution center and mass grave for rivals. From 2010-2012, the drug cartel dispatched
approximately 150 victims on prison grounds by burning their bodies and dumping
the remains in a nearby a river.
Astonishingly, the victims were not fellow prisoners who were
incarcerated with Los Zetas. Rather,
they were either snatched from cities and towns, then brought to the prison to
be killed or were killed outside the prison walls, and their bodies brought to
the prison to be disposed of.[2]

El Chapo’s daring
escape and Los Zetas’ extraordinary use of Piedras Negras Prison serve as
reminders of what Michel Foucault argued in his seminal work, Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison—prisons
must be studied “as social phenomena that cannot be accounted for by the
juridical structure of society alone, nor by its fundamental ethical choices;
we must situate them in their field of operation, in which the punishment of
crime is not the sole element.”[3] The importance of prisons as social
phenomena beyond their role as institutions of punishment is especially
relevant when attempting to understand their place in narco-states. Instead of the prison being emblematic of
state control (restricting a citizen’s autonomy through application of the
law), it has become a powerful institution that undermines governmental
authority in countries where drug trafficking is pervasive. In a narco-state, incarceration often
translates into empowerment; governance comes as much from the “big house” as a
statehouse.

To better understand
the social phenomena of prisons in narco-states, Moises Naim’s concept of
“micropower” provides additional clarity.
According to Naim, micropower emanates from smaller, largely overlooked
actors that were once negligible; micropower thwarts large bureaucratic
organizations that previously controlled their fields.[4] Micropower is “unburdened by size, scale,
asset and resource portfolio, centralization and hierarchy” and outflank
larger, more established actors.[5] The
micopower emanating from prisons has transformed them into significant sites of
both order and disorder in narco-states, affecting their stability and
durability. The far-reaching
implications for narco-states requires new ways to tackle the role of prisons
in these fragile countries.

click on image to enlarge

“Hangin’ and Bangin’,”
Predation and Welfare

The micropower of
prisons emanates from the activities and interests of incarcerated members of
criminal organizations like gangs. In
narco-states, drug trafficking activities have increased corruption and
impunity, weakening state institutions and leading to prisons that are often
“self-governed” and autonomous. For
example, a 2012 study from the Mexican Human Rights Commission found that gangs
and drug cartels controlled approximately sixty percent of the nation’s
correctional facilities.[6]

Prison gangs like those
in Mexico and elsewhere are notoriously difficult to combat. Prison gangs
comprising incarcerated members of established street gangs like El Salvador’s
Mara Salvatrucha-13 and Barrio 18 and Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital
(PCC) and Comando Vermerlho (CV) are distinct from other types of armed groups
because they can thwart and disrupt traditional state actions to repress
them. A Brookings Institution study on
the power of prison gangs described the state’s conundrum:

Unlike traditional
armed groups though, prison gangs cannot be directly neutralized through
repressive force, since most of their leadership is already incarcerated.
Indeed, common hardline state responses like aggressive policing, anti-gang
sweeps, and enhanced sentencing can inadvertently swell prison gangs’ ranks and
strengthen their ability to coordinate activity on the street. Breaking up
prison-gang leadership has proved particularly counterproductive, often
facilitating prison gangs’ propagation throughout state-and national-level
prison systems. Alternative approaches like gang truces that exploit prison
gangs’ capacity to organize and pacify criminal markets…are politically dicey
(and hence unstable), and ultimately leave the state partially dependent on
prison gangs for the provision of order, both within and beyond the prison
walls.[7]

The micropower of
prisons is also generated by the degree of insulation and protection that
prisons give to incarcerated gang members. First, imprisoned gang members are
already subjected to harsh penalties meted out by the state. Short of torture and death, there are only a
few additional levers—such as revocation of specific privileges, transfer to a
higher security facility or placement in solitary confinement—that the state
can use against an inmate to gain compliance.
However, the degree of corruption and lack of adequate resources in
narco-states limits the employment and effectiveness of these tools. Second, not only are there limits on how the
state can further control incarcerated gang members, there are also limits on
how their associates on the outside can affect them. Prison walls and guards protect incarcerated
gang members from the possibility that any disaffected non-incarcerated
associates might organize and attack them en masse.[8]

The micropower
emanating from prisons is more than the ability of gangs to disrupt and thwart
state authority; micropower is also the ability of prison gangs to develop interests
and conduct activities that meet those interests inside and outside jailhouse
walls. Mike Davis views the interests of
gangs as combining “elements of both predation and welfare,” where gangs act as
“vampire-like parasites on their neighbors” to earn money and respect while in
other instances they “play Robin Hood” by bolstering needy communities through
the provision of certain services in the areas where they operate.[9] To meet these interests, gang activities
center on extortion, protection rackets and acts of violence as well as
socializing with each other, managing internal gang relationships and
generating support in the larger communities where they operate. In other words, gang members’ activities are
as much about “hangin’” as they are “bangin’.”[10]

The interests and
activities of prison gangs can be depicted along two different axes as a way to
provide a fuller spectrum of how prison micropower is manifested (see Graph
1). The horizontal axis of interests
ranges from predation (the illegal exploitation of people and resources) to
welfare (the provision of goods and services to the community inside and
outside prison). The vertical axis of
activities ranges from hangin’ (internal cohesion) to bangin’ (the use and
threat of violence).

This schema can be used
to group the actions of various prison gangs and how they affect
narco-states. In the northwest quadrant
of the graph (hangin’ and predation), prison gangs focus on defining certain
areas of the prison to place under their control, such as commissaries,
kitchens and specific common areas.
They will also engage in “taxation” of inmates and collude with guards
and staff for favors and access. By
establishing such control, a prison gang also earns taxes from non-incarcerated
members by promising to protect them and provide for their needs if they enter
a correctional facility under the gang’s authority. To demonstrate their loyalty to the gang,
members who still run the streets will make deposits in the commissary accounts
of their imprisoned associates and/or take care of their families on the
outside.

In the southwest
quadrant (hangin’ and welfare), prison gangs organize methods of prison
governance, including the composition of “constitutions” that delineate the roles,
rights and responsibilities of membership.
Some prison officials will encourage such informal governance structures
to ease the pressure on guards and staff.[11]
Gangs also construct informal prison economies that distribute
contraband to loyal members and followers as well as to those who pay them for
access. Prison gangs can do more than
offer protection and provide for the needs of the members. They can also convey upon an individual a
type of status in the gang. A tenure in
prison can produce certain bona fides for a gang member that will allow him to
rise in the ranks of the gang and grant him greater credibility in the streets
when he is released.

Just as prison gangs
can use the possibility (or even the anticipation) of their non-incarcerated
members entering a penal institution to provide incentives for compliance, they
can also use the same possibility to coerce their members.[12] Without the protection and accommodation of a
prison gang, a new inmate has very few resources to defend himself in a
confined and hostile environment. A
prison gang can withhold its services, leaving a new inmate defenseless and
deprived of resources that may make his sentence more bearable. A gang may also actively seek to harm a
disobedient new inmate. This knowledge
among non-incarcerated gang members creates an important way for prison gangs
to “discipline the workforce” beyond the prison walls. As one gang leader in Rio de Janeiro put it,
“Whatever you do on the outside, on the inside you’ll have to answer for
it.”[13] Disciplining the workforce
stands roughly in the center of the axes as it is key to developing interests
and coordinating the activities of prison gangs.

The ability of prison
gang to determine how comfortably and safely a new inmate from the gang spends
his time behind bars functions as an important source of the micropower of
prisons in narco-states. Because
narco-states are institutionally fragile, a prison gang’s ability to control
their non-incarcerated members allows them to extend their authority beyond
prison walls. They can issue orders to
coerce and attack rival gangs, state agents and citizens on the outside as well
as to direct the provision of goods and services to communities where the gang
operates.

This capability in tandem with
the prison gang’s ability to control the prison environment through
intimidation of guards and officials is a potent combination. In fact, the micropower of prisons in
narco-states is more apparent in the shaded area of the northeast quadrant
(bangin’ and predation) and the southeast quadrant (bangin’ and welfare) of
Graph 1. In the northeast quadrant, for
example, coordinated prison riots occurred in Brazil to force the government to
provide better living conditions for gang members.[14] In another example that demonstrated the
ability of prison gangs to coerce prison personnel to assist them in their
external criminal enterprises, gang members forced guards at Gomez Palacio
Prison in Mexico into releasing them at night and provided them with prison
vehicles and weapons to kill rivals in a different city.[15] In more extreme cases, the PCC and CV prison
gangs in Brazil directed campaigns of violence aimed at the state and society
to force politicians and police to end their more heavy-handed approaches
against their members. In May 2006, the
PCC coordinated a multiday attack against nearly 300 sites across Sao Paulo as
a way to force police to end their repression in neighborhoods where they
operated and to prevent the transfer of over 700 gang members to maximum
security prisons.[16] Police stations,
transit centers and governmental institutions were targeted, killing 261
people.

Prison gangs are also
able to direct their violence in ways that provide goods and services for
communities where their membership continues to operate. In the southeast quadrant, prison gangs
continue to view themselves as community protectors and providers. Because law enforcement and the courts are
viewed as corrupt in many narco-states, citizens will turn to local gangs to
seek justice. The PCC, CV and MS-13 have
their own “courts” to settle domestic disputes, enforce property rights and
even adjudicate small claims cases.[17]
Prisons have also been important sites for gang truce negotiations in
Honduras and El Salvador. The most
notable was the 2012 MS-13 and Barrio 18 gang truce in El Salvador that was
negotiated in Zacatecoluca Prison. In
return for better prison conditions and jobs programs, the imprisoned gang
leadership directed their members on the street to limit their use of violence
and restrict their recruitment in schools.
As a result, the homicide rate in the nation plummeted, demonstrating
the ability of prison gangs to control the levels of violence in a nation.

The Implications of the
Micropower of Prisons

Hangin’ and bangin’,
predation and welfare demonstrate how prison gangs are able to construct,
exercise and extend a type of “carceral sovereignty” by virtue of their control
of prisons. The governments of narco-states
treat prisons as “human dumping grounds”[18] and are merely content to have
some gang members and leaders removed from the streets. The imprisonment of violent gang members,
even in dysfunctional correctional facilities, is one mechanism to ameliorate
public perceptions of governmental ineffectiveness. However, once behind bars in prisons that are
under-resourced and permeated by corruption, gang members adjust the dimensions
of their incarceration to produce authority over the institution and society,
rather than the state being able to use the institutional authority of the
prison to adjust the dimensions of gang activities.

As a result of the
adaptability of prison gangs, prisons in narco-states have emerged as important
sites of order and disorder. On the one
hand, prisons enable gangs to create order in specific communities by providing
useful services. In addition, gang
truces negotiated in Salvadoran and Honduran prisons stand as testaments to the
centrality of these institutions to reduce homicides in their societies. On the other hand, prisons are a source of
disorder by permitting gangs to increase the levels of violence on the street
as a way to coerce the state. The CV and
PCC attacks coordinated from prisons demonstrate their role as command
headquarters for directing high levels of lethal violence in cities. So intimate is the order and disorder nexus,
the micropower of prisons may be best described as the ability to generate
“dis/order” in a narco-state.

The implications for narco-states
are far-reaching. Governments compete
with the shadow sovereignty emanating from prisons. Politicians in narco-states must calculate
how prison gangs might react to policy choices that might negatively affect
their interests. Some gang leaders have
public profiles, giving them an additional degree of political power. These implications leave citizens uncertain
about whether their interests or those of criminal groups guide the formation
and implementation of public policy that affects their daily lives.

Because of the
micropower of prisons, the following recommendations should be explored to
reduce its implications for narco-states:

Prisons should be
considered as more than peripheral institutions, but as part of the sinews of
narco-states. Prisons have become
strategic spaces for gangs in narco-states.
Prisons do not serve to disrupt gang violence, but act as a way for
gangs to export their authority. All
states struggle with the interests and activities of prison gangs, but
narco-states are especially susceptible to their capacity to harm the
legitimacy of governance.

Each prison should be
viewed through the lenses of the culture and history of the narco-state where
they exist. Mexican prison gangs are
linked to powerful drug cartels while El Salvadoran gangs find some of their
roots in the nation’s civil war.
Brazil’s CV is rife with leftist political rhetoric and the PCC traces
its origins back to the 1992 prison massacre at the Carandiru prison complex.

Gangs are not
monolithic; the connection between prison gangs and their comrades on the
street is not always solid. Many gangs
are federated entities or even franchised.
Exploiting these gaps in the continuum of gang governance requires a
deeper investment in intelligence capabilities that focus on the dynamics of
criminal gangs.

A system of “mentor
prisons” should be established. Keeping
in mind the unique history and culture of each country, a mentor prison system
would resemble the “sister city” program, but with added emphases on how
successful prisons around the world can work with struggling prisons in
narco-states to transmit their best practices in reducing the power of prison
gangs.

Understanding the
micropower of prisons in narco-states must be an essential first step in building
policies and strategies that curtail the capacity of gangs to affect democratic
governance.

The views expressed do
not represent those of the US government, the US Department of Defense or the
US Army.

[8] David Skarbeck,
“Governance and Prison Gangs,” American Political Science Review 105, no.4,
(2011): 715. However, while storming the
prison to attack their incarcerated brethren is difficult, there have been
“coups” where members on the street have colluded with the government to place
their own incarcerated gang leaders in solitary confinement or move them to
more distant prisons. The state agreed
to these actions in exchange for limiting gang activity in certain areas and
reducing street violence. Doug Farah,
“Gangs as Transnational Criminal Organizations,” Gangs and Drug Trafficking in
Central America Conference, University of Pittsburgh, October 22, 2015.

[9] Mike Davis,
“Foreword,” John Hagedorn, World of Gangs (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2008), xi.

Pawns in prison control a lot of business for politicians and bring their prison culture out on the streets any chance the get and there is always wardens and corrections officers looking out for #1. Prisons should be mob rule and no leaders, because they are the ones selling out a d causing problems inside, same as in the police and the military, their vertical control has never worked.

12:00 Mr caca had not been convicted of any crime or sentenced to a death penalty, same way kennedy had not been accused, convicted or sentenced on any US court, just because it is "tejas" they have no bigger right on the lives of people than the federal government, one sicario can't have anybodys' life or death on their hands.

Wow almost hard to believe guys getting let out of prisons for the night to commit crimes and even vehicles provided them,then they go back.The other 1 is bringing kidnap victims to the prison to murder them.Unbelievable!It's also kind of like Escobar building his own prison to house himself!That's incredible control and what a slap in the face to the state.Embarrassing!No wonder they go back to crime once released;they never stopped at all.They are supposed to be there for punishment.In years to come these criminals may have less control in the prisons in Mexico as there are starting to be a lot of 'lone wolves'operating.That may make it more controllable.Then again maybe not.Can you even imagine if these guys weren't released as quick as they are when their 'cartel' bribes their members out much worse it could be?

The basic principles described in the article apply to any state and not only narco-states!!! By ignoring this 'fact' the message the article is trying to convey is flawed!

Reality is that poverty (= lack of education, healthcare, jobs etc.) feeds crime which feeds prisons which feeds prison gangs and there are prison gangs where ever there is a prison.

The notion that prisons provide the basis for rehabilitation (=assisting the convict to a life outside of crime once released) is laughable and instead we know that our current prison system serve as crime universities.

Thus, our swelling prison ranks do not provide additional security for law-abiding society, but instead serve as a time-bomb with massive numbers of well-trained convicts released into society.

Hence, if you want to address crime you got to address poverty, which most of us know to be true, but which is never brought up to discussion, since it would mean that the ruling elite might have to move out of the very comfortable chairs in which they are sitting.

Sorry 4:56-I don't buy it;that poverty feeds crime.I think drug addiction feeds crime.Maybe poverty does on a really small scale,relatives help each other out,etc.Morally bankrupt people that are poor for sure and a small amount of people that say they will help out for money logistics for drug trafficking but end up sicarios and robbing people for someone else and can't get out of it or they will be killed.What about all the well to do people that aren't poor and add in drug trafficking?What about the wealthy drug traffickers that never take a step back and retire?It's simple greed.Now drug addicts generate so much crime it's not funny.I think many of us have experienced this 1st hand from someone we know that has robbed their families blind then gone on to commit public robberies or scams,not paid their rent,bills,feed their kids,etc. because of their addictions.Yes they are poor but it's self inflicted but the poverty is not caused from lack of job,opportunities[although they will lie and tell you it is],it's simple drug addiction.I will bet a good percentage of people at food banks are drug addicts and alcoholics that can't budget their money not the people it's meant to help like the recently unemployed,senior's and single Mom's that can't get their child support to feed their kids.

Dr. Juan Pablo de Tavira Noriega primer director del penal de almoloya, asesinado en pachuca hidalgo, murdered after many death threats from don neto and rafael caro quintero for being too much of a hard ass. The mexican government moved heaven and earth to never find the murderer.It is always the politicians corrupting everything else for personal gain, and if one or two get out of line, they will be dealt with.